


Miracle and Wonder

by eruthiel



Category: Political RPF - UK 20th-21st c.
Genre: 2000s, Diary/Journal, Gen, New Labour, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eruthiel/pseuds/eruthiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A contemporary account by a former prime-ministerial aide of the first week of the 2002 reanimation crisis. Of no scientific value.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miracle and Wonder

**Author's Note:**

> Zombieshambles, anyone? Millarbell + Mandelson gen, light-hearted and revoltingly mundane in places but with mentions of death and mild zombie gore. The Blair & Campbell kids are in there, but they’re largely separate from the darker stuff and I mostly didn’t bother with other family members. Realism’s loss is their unwitting gain. Same flexibility goes for the GPS implants (not that they’re really essential but actual technology is never quite as advanced as I assume it is when planning these things!). Hope you like. :)

_March 1st_

The Peter M report, Hammond Mark 2, was the main political story but everything was obscured very quickly by an explosion in a factory in Essex around dawn. Depressing stuff, upwards of forty people killed, but not likely to reflect badly on us and difficult to understand besides. TB would have to make a statement. It was hard to work with since nobody could tell me exactly what had happened, and every serious attempt to find out just resulted in a rash of nascent conspiracy theories.

TB asked me to find out if anyone had any bad news they were likely to try and bury, but as far as I could find out the only major problem we had was the ongoing one of GB. His people really didn’t trust me and didn’t bother trying to hide it. The impatience went both ways by this point. Sally agreed it was wearing everyone down trying to keep some kind of fragile peace. Peter H worked with TB on his statement longer than I’d have liked. By the time he was ready to go I felt like grabbing him and saying ‘don’t you know we’re working to a schedule?’ Didn’t, had a croissant instead.

Peter M called, sounding put out that all the destruction had stolen his thunder. He went on to ask what exactly was going on. I still had very little to go on so I had to admit I didn’t know any better than he did. He wanted to know if I was free for dinner. I felt it might have helped to see him, but too much effort to meet anyone on top of work, so I made up an excuse and promised to see him over the weekend. Fiona was pretty annoyed when I related this to her later.

By the evening the Essex disaster was dominating everything. The lack of concrete detail was feeding the fire of media interest. Spent a few hours with TB, trying to get a handle on the situation. Just when we thought we were getting there, four more people were reported dead. Not confirmed - there were actual new casualties. Now this wasn’t just a one-off explosion but an ongoing public health concern situation event blah. That made it Alan Milburn's problem but it turned out his advisers were clueless about it too, so I had to give him a meaningless little line about condolences to families and continuing investigations, and hope he wouldn't try to be a hero. Charles K went on _Newsnight_ and was satisfyingly crap, which drew the spotlight off us for a bit.

Around midnight the situation progressed from troublesome to simply strange. TB got a call from Jeremy Heywood and the look on his face was horrible. They didn't want to discuss whatever it was openly, so I actually ended up getting quite an early night, but suddenly the only word in my head was ‘terror.’ If the military got involved, it would be in every other head in the country within minutes. Disaster waiting to happen.

 

_March 2nd_

Was just drifting off for the third or fourth time around 3a.m. when the doorbell woke me up. Some wankers in uniform wanted us to leave the house and get in their van. At first I thought it was only me but they wanted Fiona and the kids too. Lost it when they wouldn't tell me why or what was going on. They said they were army, and wouldn't leave until we agreed to go with them, so we sat in the kitchen with the news on, Fiona having refused to stay in bed. Somehow the kids didn't wake up, which I was glad about.

There was nothing relevant on the news, just rehashes of yesterday's theme: 'we don't know anything.' Thirty more people were confirmed dead in the area but there were no official leads as to how they died. There was no new footage from the site, just blurry photographs. As if I needed any more confirmation that the military were behind the whole shoddy cover-up.

Fiona tried to stop me calling TB. I couldn't get through to him anyway, but one of the army guys gave me a different number, one I didn't recognise. I asked TB what was going on and he said it was easier to discuss in person, and that we had to do as we were told, and I was not to contact the media. The van would take us to a secure base, [censored], where he and his family already were, and we'd be safe there. He sounded shaken but firm and utterly convinced of what he was saying. I had to trust him.

I told Fiona to wake up the kids and get them in the car, but she wanted to know what was going on. I told her I didn't know any better than she did. It was all a bit of a shambles and I felt terrible for not being on top of the situation, but it had happened so suddenly and in all fairness nobody else seemed to know what to do either. I could tell she was annoyed but we got the kids up and dressed and into the van.

When it came to a stop after about twenty minutes, we got out and were greeted by armed men. I tried to keep my cool to reassure the kids, who were visibly frightened, but the atmosphere was getting to all of us. Oddly I felt less frightened when Grace insisted on being given a piggy-back; Fiona once told me that keeping her safe is not just a duty but a right. She's gotten much heavier these last few years. The soldiers weren't aggressive, they didn't so much as touch us, and honestly I think they were as confused as the next bloke, but it was still a rattling experience.

We were shown to a small room and offered coffee and tea. I took the tea, Fiona declined, but they insisted and I said, maybe we should drink the tea. Then we were introduced to a D[censored] R[censored], a real army-type woman who was brisk but nonetheless seemed generous enough. She explained that all those people in Essex were being killed by an airborne pathogen that the hospital staff there hadn't any idea how to treat. She said there were contingency plans in place for just such an outbreak and we were not yet at risk, but there was a real possibility of an uncontrollable pandemic unless serious measures were taken at once, hence TB's relocation to [censored] - so he could be at the heart of decision-making.

But what gave her the right to drag my family out here at four in the morning? She said TB had demanded me. TB and their kids were here too, and GB and JP and a few others, with their families, to make arrangements. That it was important we were all mentally equipped for the scale of the disaster looming, even though it probably wouldn't strike.

Then she called in two nurses and said it was best if we consented to having GPS devices implanted. If we got infected, they would make it easier for us to be found and assisted. Fiona didn't seem convinced and she refused, at which DR asked her quite plainly how she would feel if I went missing without trace in the midst of a massive national emergency. Fiona was furious, and I was quite proud of her, but in the end we both agreed.

She got the nicer nurse. We made the kids look away while they took our coats and rolled up our sleeves. I always react badly to needles, but these were massive nail-gun-like contraptions, and sure enough the next thing I knew it was all over. Just a stab of pain in my arm and the feeling of a lump like a grain of rice under my skin. By the time I was properly back to my senses, Fiona was arguing with the staff again because they wanted to do the same thing to the children. She seemed very anti-that, even though it could only be good for their safety, and I could sort of see what she meant. It wasn't nice to have these officials telling us what to do. DR gave us a number to call if we needed any help or changed our minds.

After Fiona was finished arguing, I asked to be taken to TB and the soldiers showed us all along to another room, this one also windowless but with a sofa and a television screen, and doors that led off to bedrooms and bathrooms. It was a very depressing environment. TB was sitting there, evidently just out of the shower, wearing only a dressing gown. He had dripped water all over the sofa and the floor and was picking at his nails.

CB was in the next room, and Fiona took the kids through to see her and try to get them some sleep, while I stayed in the first room with TB. He said isn't this great? It's state of the art, top security. He didn't look or sound like he thought it was great at all. I asked where we would go from here. I was a bit surprised when he just shook his head and said he didn't know. I asked, shall we go back to Downing Street? There would be confusion and disorder if we didn't. The effects of fear could be much worse than those of the pathogen, I said. He didn't say much. I wanted to believe he was gathering his thoughts, calmly working out the best path to take, but in all honesty he seemed shell-shocked. I was about to snap at him when he looked at me, silent, with so much terror on his face that I realised he must know something I didn't - something horrible.

I couldn't bring myself to attack him so I put an arm around his shoulders and decided not to say anything for a while. At one point Kathryn came bursting in through the door, stopped when she saw us, then turned around and went back to her mum. I remembered mine and then wished that I hadn't.

At last TB rubbed his eyes and mumbled something about needing to get his kids far out of harm's way. I told him it would look bad and encourage panic to break out, and could do more harm than good. He wrapped his arms around mine and clung on really tight and said, are you sure? Definitely. He closed his eyes and nodded. 'I trust your judgement. The people need me to reassure them, not turn and run.' I didn't know what to say. I wanted to leave him to himself for a minute but he was holding on tight, his lips moving silently, eyes screwed shut. I felt like my sceptical presence might ruin his prayer but he didn't seem to mind.

It's always felt absurd to me to pray for people in danger or distress. It's wasted energy that could be spent actually helping; it's more for the benefit of the one doing the praying. I suddenly felt bad about not having the implants put in the kids and was relieved when Fiona came back in to break the awkward silence. I told her my thoughts and she got very snippy. We tried not to raise our voices with TB and his family there but to be honest we both needed a bit of a yell, and TB didn't seem to mind. Fiona kept saying that she would never let the military control the lives of her family. She was perfectly capable of keeping them safe herself. At last I gave up fighting with her, but resolved to raise the issue another time.

There was a double bed, two bunks and a cot. We put the youngest ones at either end of the cot and forced the other kids to double up in the bunkbeds. I knew I wouldn't get to sleep now, so suggested to Fiona she try her luck in the double bed, but she declined. I thought perhaps she didn't trust me. It wasn't a nice feeling.

TB and CB took the bed instead but I could hear them talking for ages. It sounded like they took a lot of comfort from each other. Fiona and I watched the telly with the sound muted. There was more extensive reporting of the deaths now, of whole towns near and not so near the research centre being evacuated, and I wondered if TB had authorised all this military involvement. Hated having no contact with the outside world. It made me uneasy to think of soldiers out there among frightened civilians.

They kept playing TB's message from yesterday, and that was even worse - we'd written it yesterday in response to the initial incident. We hadn't known then that things were going to get out of hand, and so quickly, too. Still, it was better for people to see yesterday's calm, unruffled TB rather than today's reality. It would help the public to hear him speak like nothing was really wrong.

At 5.10 the staff came back for me and TB. He wasn't dressed so Fiona stalled them while CB helped him into his trousers and shirt. Then we were both led up to a briefing room where it was a nice surprise to see Jonathan, who I hadn't known was at [censored] at all. He was as well as could be expected. He explained that his family was still at home and he was eager to get back to them. He'd been reading all about the outbreak contingency plan and didn't seem to think much of it.

We all had tea and were shown a slideshow about what little information had been gathered so far about the pathogen. From the way Tony didn't look straight at it, I could tell he'd seen it before, which explained a lot about the state he'd been in when I arrived. It was horrible. Not the kind of stuff you can forget in a hurry. A lot of the science bits went over my head but by the end I was seriously worried, and so was JoP. We agreed that this had the making of real mass-hysteria fuel. TB was starting to go back to his usual self but was still rattled. I was concerned that even though he'd handled big crises before, he'd never had to do so while fearing for the immediate safety of his whole family. Eventually he closed his eyes and drifted away again. I wanted to slap him. JoP said, leave him be. He didn't say it out loud but I was sure he had the same idea as me: that if TB didn't pull himself together quickly, he would find himself in real, deep shit.

The possibility of GB or JP trying to lead the country through this was spine-chilling, so we ordered TB a coffee and kept telling him to pull himself together until he was back on the road to snapping out of it. Right, he said at last, the most important thing is to head up top like this is a normal day. JoP and I agreed. I would have to work quickly to find a strategy for handling the story, but it was best done from my normal office and with normal methods, to reinforce the message that all was well. Meanwhile behind the scenes TB would help to oversee the strategy for containing the pathogen itself.

What was so frightening about it was that it was spreading much quicker than it could be studied, and it seemed to me at this rate the epidemic could be in full swing before any kind of cure or vaccine could be devised. That's why it was so important to work like mad at keeping the public relatively relaxed about it. As I had to keep reminding the others, their panic could be a lot more harmful than the pathogen alone, and would be hard to stop once it took hold.

By 6a.m. I was clear of [censored] and back on the phone, Fiona having taken the kids home for a proper breakfast to calm them down. Felt good to have a better grasp of the situation at last. It formed the basis of an approach I could use to counter the fear-mongers who just wanted headlines about biological terrorism.

The soldiers crawling all over Essex made it hard to put the case that we weren't dealing with a deliberate terrorist strike, but I did my best, the cover-up made sure everyone was under-informed, and in the end there was nothing too shocking in the press. Over lunch I tried to figure out what could be done to get the broadcasters to tone down their coverage, but it wasn't easy. The BBC had recorded a few snippety interviews with survivors who kept throwing around the word 'zombie.' It was infuriating how well it stuck, but of course it had captured the public imagination at once. They wanted to think of the horrible reality in familiar fantasy terms. There was panic buying flaring up here and there already.

TB gave a quick interview in the afternoon. He was suitably firm in rejecting the terrorism ideas, suggestions that a single illness could bring the country to its knees etc. Lot of anger in the media directed (thank god) at hospitals and medical community for failing to handle the volume of patients or come up with an immediate cure. These people were like spoiled children.

More evacuations were rolled out all day, but it was v clandestine, no cameras allowed. Spent the rest of the day fighting back the zombie thing and felt pretty pleased with how easy it was to make someone look childish when they were crowing about undead monsters. Things were back on track by the evening. Death toll creeping towards the thousands. Guy from the BMA was on Sky News doing a decent job of talking up the possibility of a vaccination without actually confirming anything. Tripe, but the right kind of tripe.

The kids were a mix of frightened and excited. I wondered if they would be kept out of school on Monday. When I tried to raise the subject of their safety with Fiona she got defensive and tetchy about it, as if I'd attacked her judgement, so I dropped it. She said the whole scare was being blown out of proportion. Wished I could agree with that assessment.

Spoke briefly to TB about what to do should the disease reach London but he was basically slipping back out of control. I didn't want to push him too hard, knowing what he'd be up against tomorrow and the day after and so on, so left it for now and focused on keeping things relatively calm.

 

_March 3rd_

In the two hours I was asleep, everything got ten times more fucked. Mass exodus from immediate area of the accident was useless as asymptomatic carriers were shoved in with the rest of them, and the contamination spread. There were trucks full of new patients - except that they weren't patients because nobody could treat them and nobody could get near them, and they certainly couldn't be released. Started to look to me like some kind of deliberate attack after all, and I wasn't the only one.

Amateur footage surfaced that supposedly vindicated the zombie shit. It was probably a hoax but had to be suppressed anyway or the response would have been insane. Panic buying was escalating and people were getting crushed in the desperation to escape the path of the disease. I wondered if this so-called outbreak contingency plan covered communication strategy. If so it didn't seem to involve me. No more word from [censored], even though I tried to get in touch repeatedly.

Noticed a bad itch just where they put in the microchip, and my head was hurting. Wondered what the fuck the early signs of this thing might be. Couldn't find a paracetamol. SM called, and she was holding up as well as could be expected. I asked if she thought we'd be safe in London. She said it wasn't a question of if but how long. Our best bet was to try and tag along abroad somewhere with TB at the first possible opportunity. She suggested he'd probably be safely off begging the EU for help by the end of the week. I said if we haven't got help from somewhere by the end of the week then there won't be anybody left to save, which earned me a scolding for being gloomy.

TB didn't help matters on the gloom front. He'd apparently taken a dive after his brief period of activity yesterday. He hadn't been eating enough and he certainly wasn't doing anything constructive. Our combined bad moods made it difficult to be in the same room; he was really sarky and pessimistic, and that was undermining the whole media operation. JoP said, at least he's trying. 'Oh, is he?' He wasn't, I'd seen him trying and this was not it. If this was his version of trying I wouldn't want to see him not trying, and what's more he'd probably be living on the street.

A sort of impromptu zombiegate mitigation committee was set up in the absence of an appropriate parliamentary group to control the spreading panic: me, Peter M, lads from the Home Office and via phone the same team who'd shown us that awful slideshow yesterday. We had to put together a short PSA that would stick in the head, reassure people while getting them informed about relevant safety measures. The issue was that it was extremely hard to discuss the disease or its effects in any way without it becoming too frightening and disgusting, since the symptoms are basically rotting of all your tissues before you can say 'I think I need a lie down.' We didn't want to alarm anybody by making everything seem as fucked as it really was, so a lot had to be cut. Disagreed with Peter and had to overrule him about the colour scheme. Red was the obvious choice; says danger, demands attention. He wanted sky blue. What a crap (and typically Peter) idea.

Some channels already had their own attempts, with various degrees of 'humour.' We couldn't force them to drop those, but they did agree to also broadcast our version every hour. People would start to tune it out very quickly but the important thing was that the message stuck. Peter and I both agreed the final cut could have been a lot worse in the circumstances. Before I left he said, I thought you were going to have me over for dinner this weekend. I could never tell if he was joking. Peter seemed unaffected by all the uproar, but he looked at me like I'd changed.

The word 'zombie' was still an issue. The more it got used the less ridiculous it would begin to sound, and ridiculous was all I had. _News of The World_ had 'Blight Of The Living Dead' as their front page, the disrespectful bastards. The only thing that stopped me falling asleep on the spot the moment we'd finished the ad was the drive to go and come down on them like a ton of righteous bricks. Did so. Pointed out that even their readership would stop taking them seriously if they kept it up. The general mood of their response was 'our readership will all be dead by the time the next issue comes out unless TB starts doing something about it.' I was quite harsh on them. Didn't feel very bad about it.

In all this I'd hardly seen TB. He'd called a few times in a real state so I went to see him just as it was getting dark. CB didn’t look pleased to see me, but even though she never does I got the impression this was different - as if she'd already been displeased beforehand and I had nothing to do with it. She must have been having an awful time of it. I felt worse for TB, though, despite my frustration with him. After all, he had the troubles of the whole country on his shoulders. It really showed, too. He was very drawn. I got the sense that all the steel we rely on was still lurking just beneath the surface, beneath the reluctance to engage, and it was as strong as ever. I probably could have brought it into the light by having a bit of a go at him, but I didn't have the heart, so we watched the news together instead while he caught up on some other business. Non-zombie business.

The TV was not exactly helpful. Kept being confronted on every channel by an inescapable American who called himself a zombie expert. He was forecasting the end for the UK and telling people to fill their bathtubs and not be complacent enough to put their faith in the government. Decided pretty quickly that he was a cunt.

When CB brought coffee I noticed she was wearing a pendant the size of her fist, which had a really 'alternative' look to it that I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at. She hinted it was time to leave. TB protested and CB suggested very sarcastically that they put me up permanently in the spare room. I said no, thank you, and on any normal night I could not have bothered but tonight it was important to get home to Fiona and the kids. On the way I saw police out with riot gear, but no rioters.

There were splitting carrier bags from edge to edge of the kitchen table. Fiona was awake when I got to bed, but she wouldn't meet my eye. It's very quiet here.

 

_March 4th_

TB finally pushed his luck too fucking far today. We had a massive row over the phone that lasted from 5.45 to 7.30, on and off and on and off, with lots of crying and shouting. Every time he got started I would feel guilty and back off for a while, until he'd just go and say something so irritating that I'd have to try and snap him out of it again. I couldn't tell if he was suddenly becoming unreasonable or I was suddenly becoming less agreeable to his bullshit. No matter how difficult it was and no matter what he was going through, so long as he was still the PM he had to put that aside and understand that wanting to make things better was not the same as actually making them better. He ignored it all. He said he was drawing a line in the sand and I had to decide whether I was ready to cross it. I said I wasn't ready yet and he told me not to be silly. Then he left - didn't hang up, just left the handset alone. So I hung up and then took the phone back off the hook.

Suppose it didn't help that for much of that conversation I'd also been juggling an argument with Fiona. She wanted to take the kids to school as normal. I was insistent that they shouldn't leave our sight even for a moment. I just didn't want to lose them. I didn't have Fiona's faith that the danger was being exaggerated. I wanted all of us to stay together.

I stayed in for a few hours after she'd taken them out at 8.30. It wasn't easy to keep away from TB and the TV was just playing our fucking notice from yesterday, which made my stomach turn. I tried to call PG for some reassurance but for over an hour there was no response, and at last I gave up. I wasn't sure when Fiona would be coming back so I started picking through the carrier bags on the table. There were ten tins of sticky toffee pudding: two each with two left over because Grace refuses to eat anything gooey. I had my two right then and thought, at least one of the spares is probably for me, so I had that as well.

Finally got a call back from PG just as I realised I was going to hurl. Made it to the sink. He was very patient and let me call him back afterwards. He said, you're not ill, are you? And I realised what he was onto and suddenly my head was pounding. I said no, and why had it taken so long to get through to him? He'd been on a plane, going to stay with friends in Inverness. He didn't need to say why. I asked what the situation was like up there and he reported it was a lot more tense than he'd been expecting, before eventually trying to turn it into a joke. 'But that's Scots for you.' I knew he didn't mean it as a dig about how I'd failed to manage the response to the outbreak, but it felt like one. He asked if we'd had any riots. I told him we hadn't, even though I wasn't sure. I hadn't seen or heard anything to suggest actual rioting, but then I'd been shouting down the phone and eating treacle all morning so it was a hard call to make. PG sounded cheerful enough. I was glad that he and Gail and the girls had made their way to somewhere a bit safer.

Fiona came home at lunchtime and was spitting to find me still in the house. We had another row because, apparently, in refusing to face up to TB I was as bad as him. She had a point. I called her out at last on stuffing the kitchen with canned food and she said it wasn't panic buying, it was stockpiling out of necessity because everyone else was panic buying, and I said that's the definition of panic buying, and she grabbed one of the empty tins and cut her hand on the rim. Which meant I had to stay and look after her while at the same time she was ranting about how I should have been out confronting Tony. Nil-nil. We hadn't the guts to venture to A&E in light of the current situation. Once we'd washed out the cut and bandaged it up, I left try and straighten things out with TB. Much fewer people out on the streets than usual, for one reason or another. Made it in twenty-two minutes - a personal best.

A bit of a crowd were blocking the way outside his office. Had to do some elbowing to get to the front. JoP and assorted wonks were present but all nodded when I came in, so I didn't hesitate to join them. TB was behind his desk but I had to do a double take. He had less substance to him than a card cut-out. He looked how I felt. They said it was time to start considering, amongst other things, a new government arrangement to face the ongoing national emergency. As in wartime coalition. That it should come to negotiating with Tories in just four days.

TB and I were left more or less alone after that, though I was still aware of the rabble just outside. I asked if he was up for heading a government, new or otherwise, with all this going on. He seemed to take it as an affront to his capabilities, which surprised me. I tried to explain that he had to consider whether he still wanted to be doing this when it reached the point where a power-sharing compromise was our only option. Because he wasn't good enough on his own? No, and he wasn't on his own, and I resented the suggestion. Where have you been all morning, then? I couldn't believe how defensive he was being. It wasn't like him at all. How much of that could be explained away by the stress of the last few days, I wondered.

Very long, very heated exchange followed. A lot of what Fiona was always saying about needing to look through his words and take some breathing space was starting to make a lot more sense. I told him I wasn't happy with the level of military involvement. He said it was nothing, nothing to the stuff laid out in the contingency plan, and seemed just as miserable about it. They would have to seize all health services, all the food and goods still coming into the country. High-risk areas would need to be neutralised. Evacuated? No, he said, it was botched evacuation that got us into this mess. Neutralisation meant complete quarantine, extermination if necessary. I understood the principle of killing something small to save something bigger, and it was his decision to make, but it still didn't sit right and maybe it was time for me to take a break for a while.

When TB got out of his chair I noticed he had a handgun. A fucking handgun! How the fuck had he got it past security? And why? He didn't look like he was going to use it, just a bit pissed off and hurt. 'Aren't you with me? Don't you think I can save us?' He made a bit of a speech, but that was essentially what it boiled down to. In some ways that was what made me snap. It mattered more that I believed in him than that he got the actual results. And frankly, why should I? What had he done so far? Fuck all. Slaughtering more people than were already dying, who the fuck did he think he was, Stalin?

Probably not. He probably had higher aspirations than that. I kept one eye on the gun but it didn't move. He asked what I would do in his place. I didn't know, I didn't have to find out, he was the PM and I was just here for damage control in the press. Right, he said, and you couldn't even do that, could you? That stung. I suppose he was right. We argued more. When I left he'd stopped raising his voice and was asking me very calmly to stay. Still wanted to know where he got the gun. But that was me out. It's strange but when I said I was thinking of taking a break, I didn't really mean it. It was only his reaction that made me realise I'd been needing to do so for ages.

Was feeling very disorientated so I caught up with Peter M. He was a sight for sore eyes, still not looking a bit altered despite all that was going on around us. He smiled, but warily. He asked if it was true that someone had taken a marker to the Grid and just scrawled 'Doomsday' over everything. Fuck if I knew. After that he explained that TB had been given the gun and shown how to use it by his security staff that very morning. The whole story seemed highly improbable to me, maybe just because it was Peter telling it.

He said he'd been busy himself on a project of his own. Then he got that glimmer in his eye that makes you want to push him down the stairs and refused to tell me what he'd been up to until I flattered his ego by asking directly. He took me down a corridor and pointed to a big, red poster: 'KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON.' They'd been designed for distribution in the event of an imminent Nazi occupation. Now Peter was having them distributed in the event of an imminent zombie apocalypse. He thought it was nice how these things came around. I thought it was stupid to go using phrases like zombie apocalypse, and told him so. It wasn't worth bollocking him for taking the initiative, especially since it wasn't really my job anymore. They were nice posters, too. I'd told him that red was the only option. (Havering was in quarantine. By this point the army had started mowing down patients for want of anything better to do with them. I wanted people to like the posters.)

I told Peter he was welcome to come and stay with us for a while and for the first time he looked a little bit vulnerable, pleased and grateful. He said there were things he needed to pick up and phone calls to make first but he'd be glad to join us later in the evening. I wanted to stay and maybe tie up some loose ends but Sally was the only person around, now, and she was suddenly listless and unhappy. I wasn't sure whether to ask if everything was all right. I didn't have to, though. She told me by herself that her brother had got himself shot. She said it like she didn't quite believe it and had no idea what to do. Told her I was leaving and probably wouldn't come back. Her face when I sat her back down at her desk was one of the worst things I'd seen since this began.

Fiona had driven to the schools with her hand all bandaged up to collect the kids. I felt awful; she was coping so well and I was falling to pieces. I asked if she'd seen any of Peter's posters while she was out. She told me yes, she had, but far more eye-grabbing had been the ten-ft-high graffiti: 'run.' There were riot police out there, apparently, although I hadn't seen anybody on my way home. I wondered whether Peter would make it over from Kensington unscathed. Fortunately Fiona was quite warm when I told her Peter would be coming to stay, probably because she hadn't forgiven me for turning him down on Friday and wanted to see that he was okay.

I didn't even want to think about TB. I didn't want to think full stop. Now that I'd stopped working, real gloom would start to set in and the last thing I needed now was a depression on top of everything. But I just couldn't go back yet. The tension was too high. Whole sections of Outer London were being lost to the disease and it didn't look like there was any humane way out. I didn't know if I was ready to be involved in those sorts of extreme measures. I'd fucked up, but at least I had a choice about where to go next.

Played cards with the kids until Peter turned up. One half of his face was yellow and green with bruises and he had a rifle very poorly concealed in his coat. 'Or am I just pleased to see you? No, it's a rifle.' Unlike TB, Peter had the air of someone who was prepared to actually use the gun if he had to, though how safe that would be was anyone's guess. Fiona took it off to the hiding place she saves for birthday presents, 100% inaccessible to children (presumably). Peter helped her file the masses of tinned food into boxes and cupboards. It had the atmosphere of a really shit Christmas.

Later on, Peter, Fiona and I talked about the future, painful as it was to consider. I realised I had yet to explain to her that I'd effectively walked out on TB. She didn't ask why, she just agreed that it was the right thing to do. Good to find some common ground there. We all decided that it was within TB's abilities to handle this if anyone could, but that something had gone awry with him somewhere in the last few days and he just wasn't in any gear at all. He was pedalling, but not really going anywhere.

It would be interesting to see if GB was still on the lookout to take over his job. Peter said of course he is, it's Gordon - a few zombies aren't going to put him off. He sounded almost proud. GB wouldn't last very long in circumstances like this, though. The outlook was grim, but Peter gave us another laugh when he started speculating on the week ahead. He said PMQs would be worth watching if TB did it with the gun, answering every question by shooting the offending MP in the head before turning on the whole Opposition front bench. He and I were laughing helplessly in spite of the poor taste. I think we needed to. Fiona got sick of that quite quickly and changed the subject to the kids. I said I was still worried about them and wanted to go back to [censored] to see what our options were. But I didn't relish the prospect of another row so I tried to be diplomatic and suggested we let the boys decide for themselves. Fiona thought about it and said she'd mention it to them in the morning.

Lots of schools were closing already out of necessity, and she reluctantly agreed to keep them all at home tomorrow. We could explain the situation to them then and if necessary take them back to [censored]. Peter said he'd like to come too. I'd unconsciously scratched the patch on my arm where the microchip went in until the skin was raw. Fiona helped Peter make up his bed.

I went to bed with another terrible, persistent headache. Fiona was restless so I asked if she was frightened. She turned to me and said no, just stressed. She thanked me for leaving TB, and there was a wobble of emotion in her voice that explained why she hadn't said it in front of Peter. I joked that I didn't know she felt so strongly about it, which made her roll her eyes and face away again.

 

_March 5th_

The health warning was still playing in the morning. Whenever something like this happens some self-important shit will always call it a punishment from God. The political ones were almost as bad; obviously this never happened under Thatcher. Apparently two more boroughs had been quarantined overnight. Peter gave a snort every time someone on the radio wanted to know what TB thought he was doing. Didn't we all. In fact the itch to call him up and go back to him was very strong, almost overwhelming, but the anger was still there too, and the relief. I found Peter's light-heartedness in the face of all this suffering quite comforting, and it certainly endeared him to the kids.

After breakfast we got Peter to entertain Grace in the next room while Fiona and I sat the boys down to explain what we could. In reality we didn't know much more than what they'd heard from TV and their mates, which was troubling, but they were still full of questions. Who was the first patient? Does the illness reanimate corpses or just hijack the systems of living people? Is there a cure, or are you stuck that way? Are we going to have to move away? We didn't want to scare them but decided to be as honest as possible. In the end what they disliked the most was when we didn't know the answers.

Once we'd told them all we could, we showed them the patches where our implants had gone in. I said, it's just like a flu jab but it will help us find you if we get separated. Fiona tried to explain why being tracked might also be a bad idea but the boys were pretty much sold on it already. They agreed to come with us to find out if the implants were still available. We wanted to leave Grace at home with Peter but he reminded us he was interested in coming along too, so we decided with may as well take her with us instead of faffing about trying to find a babysitter. She'd be safest with the whole family around her.

Calling the number DR had given us eventually got us through to some mysterious operator, who was happy to help on the understanding we were TB's closest advisors. Happy, but not all that able. He gave us directions to a sort of makeshift military base in Camden where we could ask for assistance. It was only a few minutes' walk but we decided to drive.

When we got there they kept us waiting outside for nearly forty minutes. It was a bit bizarre. The base itself wasn't very imposing, just a few guarded Terrapins and some fencing. The kids were bored out of their minds but I couldn't unwind, and I snapped at everyone a bit more than I ought to have done. Eventually a nervy soldier came out to meet us and asked to be let into the car. The car was already full, with Grace on Fiona's knee and the boys in the back with Peter, so he stood outside and I spoke to him through the open window. I'd have got out but it was quite chilly. I told him we'd decided we wanted the kids tagging after all but he just stared at me. It was a fiercely prioritised service, apparently. Fiona stuck her head over and demanded to know why they weren't a priority. The soldier looked taken aback to say the least. Are your children senior government or military personnel? No? Then he was very sorry but resources had been redirected elsewhere. Fiona harrumphed. It was just a matter of principle, I think. Really she was quite relieved that they wouldn't be going in after all. She was just distressed that the national situation had worsened so much in just a few days, and we no longer had the kind of protection TB wanted for us from the start.

The soldier apologised and told us to get in touch if we had any more concerns for him and his colleagues. Callum shouted something about killing the zombies but he didn't seem to hear it.

By now the six of us were stuck together like glue, terrified of leaving each other's sight for long enough to get lost. Even being so close to home there was an unspoken worry that we wouldn't make it back in one piece. There were people in the streets attacking each other, some of them maybe infected. It was hard to tell. To distract the boys Peter got them into a staring competition and we put on a Paul Simon tape, which nearly lightened the mood on the drive home. There was no point looking for help elsewhere anymore. At least there we had all our resources about us.

Back at the house Peter borrowed the phone and tried one more time to book himself a seat on a flight to Brazil, but all flights were off. Fiona said surely he must have friends with jets who wouldn't mind his borrowing, but Peter didn't seem so sure. If I had my own plane I wouldn't have stuck around this long, that's for sure. Peter was very down after that. He ate about two mouthfuls of his pudding, claimed to be full, and slouched off upstairs. Fiona went to try and comfort him but came back a few minutes later saying it was like talking to a brick wall.

Not impressed by foreign messages of support. Reminded me of TB praying for his kids when what they really needed was a sterile underground bunker, in fucking New Zealand. It was all very well pledging yourself to do what you could for your British allies when 'what you could' seemed to extend as far as calling off all your transport links and refusing to buy any of our produce. Tried to keep the kids' spirits up. It was getting harder, especially since Peter didn't say another word all evening.

 

_March 6th_

Felt very low, plus ringing headache. We all stayed in. Mixed feelings about quitting the job. Wished I could have made some difference to the crisis, but then again, what was the point when anyone could just look down the street and see it going on for themselves? No point at all. It didn't just make the rest of the news look insignificant, it actually did make it insignificant - totally unimportant, because really, policy announcements don't make a blind bit of difference when there's not going to be anyone around to implement them. No word from TB. I was more concerned for him personally than for the govt. I was missing him.

Fiona theorised that despite everybody's panic about the zombies, the nation as a whole was still feeling pretty optimistic. They assumed TB or the army would save them. They thought there was a plan, which there had been, for a while, but how do you plan for something like this? I disagreed with her. The public know very well the scale of the mess they're in. We were so fucked, not by day 1 but looking back maybe day 2, that everything just became literally futile. Now there was nothing for TB to do but call an emergency EU summit and bugger off out of the country to discuss not just why they should help us, but also how they could go about it and crucially whether there was any point trying. I feared that they wouldn't want to touch us with a bargepole, unless it was a nuclear bargepole to wipe us all out and have done with it. I just hoped it wouldn't be too long before we could start to claw back some normality.

Some people were trying to get out of the country, like Peter, but it was a strict no. There were no evacuations because it was so hard to weed out asymptomatic carriers and ones who had yet to develop their symptoms. Jesus, I said to Fiona, this is pretty heavy stuff, isn't it? And she gave me a look which wasn't very encouraging.

Strictly speaking most of London was in quarantine by the end of the day, but the soldiers enforcing it were getting sick just like everyone else and I doubt if we'd wanted to leave we'd have had any trouble getting out. For now we felt safest staying put. There didn't seem to be much of it, or indeed anything, going around in the area. We heard noises a few times, vehicles and alarms, but it could all have been miles away - everything's just so quiet with so little traffic. Didn't leave the house and didn't see anyone, well or infected, all day. I don't know if we can come back from this. Three different painkillers and an early night.

 

_March 7th_

Philip called first thing to tell me that the _Telegraph_ had printed an apocalyptic playlist. That set the tone for the whole day, really. Felt a dark phase coming on but didn't say anything.

We all had scrambled egg for breakfast because the eggs wouldn't last much longer. I was hungry and anxious. Afterwards Peter went out to see how the street looked. He walked like a survivor from a disaster film, totally unabashed about it, but all of him of edge. He wore a tea towel over his mouth and nose. I covered him from the bedroom. I say 'covered' - just pointed his rifle roughly out of the window. Very glad I didn't have to use it, I barely knew how. The street was absolutely dead and there were no traffic sounds or signs of life. Even from upstairs I could hear Peter's footsteps and hear him breathing into the towel. London had never, ever been so quiet. I was starting to develop an immense hatred for guns. Last week we would never have dreamed of carrying weapons around the kids.

My mobile phone went missing overnight. Fiona said it was a good thing as Tony wouldn't be able to try and win me back round. I didn't trust her and she didn't trust me when we needed each other most. It was a horrible feeling. Even Peter's optimism had fallen through since he'd accepted he wouldn't be able to fly out to be with Reinaldo.

A really dark atmosphere filled the house and time dragged on all morning. After what TB had said about neutralisation, I couldn't get the idea out of my head and kept wondering where we'd end up if the area was declared a danger zone. Followed the news but it was as unhelpful as ever. They showed some maps of infection, like a weather report. Apparently things weren't so bad in North London yet. We hadn't seen anybody looking obviously ill, anyway. Then again, we hadn't seen anybody looking well, either. We were isolated. I wondered if we'd somehow missed some kind of evacuation.

A helicopter passed overhead and later we heard noise, machine gunfire maybe. If they were shooting at the zombies from above I had to wonder how easy it could be to tell the healthy from the ill, from up there. Was already wishing we could still be with TB on the inside instead of blundering around in the dark like any other clueless civilians. I didn't have the energy to confront Fiona about my phone. Ate some ice cream instead. Then fell asleep in the living room and had vague nightmares for a few hours.

It wasn't a relief to wake up to shouting. I thought Fiona was going spare at one of the kids, or maybe Peter. But there was too much noise and Peter dragged me upright. He started to shove his gun in my hands but I threw it back at him. Fiona yelled to just take it and do something, but I didn’t understand. Between them they explained that there was someone trying to get in the front door, and they were pretty certain it was a zombie, for want of a better word. That was scarier than it should have been, to have a horror movie cliché made of your neighbours. Fiona and Peter were shitting bricks and I didn't blame them. She said she'd sent the kids upstairs but I could see the boys peeking down through the banisters. They were both laughing, nerves perhaps?

When everyone was a little calmer we went out to the front room but the view of the garden path was always blocked from there. You could only really see out through the glass panel in the front door, which was clouded through of course. The zombie looked like a dark shapeless smudge. You could tell it was sick though. Standing close you could actually smell it. There was only the one and it was moving strangely, clearly blind, stumbling up into the door, getting knocked back, trying again. It was pitiful but horrific. Peter was still flustered, repeating himself, getting in the way. I'd known he wasn't really as hard as he'd pretended to be, but I wished that he could be. Failing that we all had to calm down and figure out what to do.

At the top of the stairs the boys were still sniggering so Fiona shooed them away. She was very, very jittery. (Later I found out what they'd drawn on me while I was asleep. Peter said it was a good sign that they'd retained their sense of humour in spite of the traumatic circumstances. What a tosser.) With the kids back out of the frame it was a little easier for us all to think, but it was a nasty dilemma - the disease was spread by the slightest contact, so even allowing it over the threshold would make the house unsafe. We knew how to kill it. Removing or destroying the head would do the trick, and we had a shovel on hand from the shed in case the gun wasn't enough.

Fiona suggested leaving it to get bored and move on or die or decompose or whatever. Peter felt we couldn't afford the risk that it might attract attention, either from the military or more zombies, or from civilians looking to become vigilante zombie-hunters. He admitted he didn't know how long a human body takes to decompose but argued that this was irrelevant, because the zombies were being rotted by something new and unfamiliar. We could end up with it banging against our door for weeks, even months, before it finally fell apart. The idea of this whole ordeal lasting that long was an upsetting one, but Peter had a point.

We discussed over some tea. Peter insisted that we couldn't open the front door to attack it unless we could be sure of driving it straight back out onto the pavement. On the other hand we couldn't attack it from any point in the house other than the front door. He said if there was a way to get out onto the street, he could come up behind it, or at least drive it away from the house. His words were coherent enough but he was still very much spooked. When Fiona suggested climbing over to next door's back garden and going forward through their house, he backed off completely, saying there had to be a solution that didn't involve breaking and entering. Did he really think anybody was going to call the police out on us today? I think maybe he was mistrustful of our neighbours; he's always been a snob. In the end I agreed to do it. Tied a towel over my mouth and nose and ventured outside.

It was easy to climb over to next door's. Had to use the shovel to smash the lock to get in and when the back door opened a dog shot out past me, barking like mad. It vanished to the far end of the garden and I went on into the house, which smelled mildly unpleasant. There was nobody around. On the kitchen floor there was a gas mask with its strap caught in the leg of a chair, so I picked it up and rinsed it off and wore it under the towel. Even if it wasn't any good, it couldn't hurt, could it?

I went out through the front door onto the pavement. I looked back over at the thing. It must have heard me or something because it turned away from our house and started dragging itself closer. It moved so slowly and pathetically that I struggled to see how we'd failed to keep these things from spreading. There was nothing aggressive about its movements, in fact the overall impression I got from a distance was one of desperation. But as it lumbered closer it got more intimidating. It really was a cadaver. The first one I'd seen in person. Its eyes had slumped to the bottoms of their sockets and the skin was just hanging off, peeling off its face, all writhing and purple. I almost wished I'd brought the gun with me, but it didn't do to get reliant on awful things, so I got ready to use the spade.

The reek of it became unbearable. I shuffled back a bit, not wanting to look at its burst face, and it came forward. Once it had been drawn a good distance from the house, I saw the front door open and Peter appeared, shouting to just hit it. I went for it with the spade just to shut him up and landed a big blow across the ear, ripping it off, crunching something inside the neck. The zombie's head drooped and I smacked it again a few times until it fell, then stood on its neck and bounced a bit until felt it snap properly. I didn't get any blood on my shoes, just bits of flesh, so I made sure to scrape it all right off before going back anywhere near the house.

Peter was standing in the doorway, shaking. I came inside before taking off the towel and mask. I asked him why he hadn't fired at the zombie himself. Apparently he'd thought the bullet might pass right through it and hit me. Sometimes it's hard to know if Peter is taking the piss. I was shaking too by the time we both got back into the kitchen. Fiona gave me a big, tight hug and said to put the weapons away, and that she would defrost some pizza for dinner, and to go and wash my face. That was when I discovered the Sharpie dick, obviously. Managed to scrub it off.

The kids were starting to go haywire by now. They'd been cooped up inside since Tuesday, scared and cut off, and the combination of zombie death and pizza made them impossible to control - although Fiona certainly tried. It was important for them not to spend too much time preoccupied with the zombies. (We were supposedly more likely to starve or dehydrate than get infected, but I didn't mention it.) They had homework to get on with, after all, even if it wouldn't be collected in for a while.

For what it's worth, water was still coming out of the taps, but it could easily have been contaminated to we all tried to drink juice and milk and bottled water where possible. I spent the rest of the day alternately reliving that zombie lurching towards me and worrying about TB. If anyone could win us the foreign aid we needed, it was him, but he'd been behaving so strangely since the outbreak that I couldn't help but fret. At least I knew not everyone would abandon him like I did. I had no doubt that wherever my mobile was, it was piling up with calls from him. Other than that, there was no word, and I didn't know who was left that I could go to and find out what was happening. I didn't know who was left at all. Before going to bed I tried to call PG again, but couldn't get through. I asked Fiona if she'd 'seen my phone,' but she wasn't going to relent. Maybe she disposed of it entirely. I guess she doesn't want me taking it and wandering off by myself and getting hurt.

I sat up very late thinking the same circular worries about us, and about Tony, and the kids. It's desperately frightening, to feel that no matter how far you run the planet will always be too small to shield them. There were noises in the street but I didn't investigate. Probably zombies. Are we really doing the right thing by staying here? I don't know. We could go to my parents', or try to follow the Goulds to Scotland, but it might not do us any good. I asked Peter, but he doesn't know either so he's not going to commit himself prematurely. Typical. God, I don't want Peter to die. I can't imagine it. I can't imagine any of the people dying who are already dead.

I miss Tony, with his repetitions and his constancy. I miss having a routine of some kind, even if I never thought of it as a routine at the time. At least then I knew how to plan for next year, next week even.

The noises got much too loud so I went back to bed. The sun is now coming up and through my fear and exhaustion I recognise the deadening of my own mind as an oncoming depression. I always had a vague feeling that being this near to death would bring on some kind of religious awakening, but nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of God, all I can see is the putrefied face of the girl I killed in the street. I'd do it a thousand times to protect my kids, and that discomforts me.


End file.
